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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23136424">A Novel Solution</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria'>cricket_aria</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Frankensteined Ben, Not-exactly-mad scientist Rey, Resurrection, cloning</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:23:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,181</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23136424</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben woke to pain. Which was unexpected when he'd been dead for quite some time.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Teratophilia Trade 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Novel Solution</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoMida/gifts">NekoMida</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He woke to pain.</p><p>Not terribly so, nothing compared to the type Snoke could cause when he thought it was time for a punishment or a lesson, but shocking in spite of its mildness when he’d grown used to not having a body to feel anything. For a long moment he could focus on nothing else.</p><p>Then he slowly realized that even with his eyes still closed he could recognize the feel of the place he’d woken up in. The sense of the Dark pushing in all around him, diminished since he was last aware but unmistakably there. He could only be on Exegol again. Or still, his mind suggested, couldn’t be that he’d never left at all? That his death and all the had come after were nothing more than a dream he’d had after being cast into the chasm by Palpatine? Wasn’t that more likely than that the Force would ever accept his spirit into it after all that he’d done?</p><p>And with that thought he suddenly realized that if it were true than he didn’t have time to waste lying around mourning a fantasy that had escaped him. “Rey!” he shouted out, shooting upright.</p><p>Or attempted to, only to find that his tongue felt so thick and clumsy in his mouth that the name came out more a gasp of “Rah,” and his limbs felt so heavy that he could barely move them let alone sit up.</p><p>Almost immediately his hand was snatched up and he heard her voice quickly reassuring him, “I’m here! I’m right here, Ben, you’re all right,” pushing down the fear for her that was so much worse than what he’d been feeling for himself. She sounded safe and strong, and not at all like a murderous grandparent might be breathing down her neck. He struggled to open his eyes to look at her, only to regret it at once as a new form of fear took hold of him. She was all over blood, more than he’d ever had on him at his worst, and Force lightning crackled in the air behind her without her even needing to focus on it.</p><p>Before he could even fully realize the thought that was creeping across his mind with a slow horror he could see her sense it. She snatched up his hands and pressed them to her chest above her heart. “Oh no, Ben, no,” she said quickly, holding his hands tightly in place as if the physical gesture meant half as much as the way her mind fell gently open for him, trusting in a way that too few moments of fighting by her side should hardly have been enough to earn him, “Feel it, Ben, I haven’t fallen. I wouldn’t spit in the face of what you did by turning around and jumping straight into the Dark. Anyway, do you really think anything else could manage to turn me when I was able to turn down your hand?”</p><p>He could indeed feel it as she spoke, her spirit was tainted by a new sorrow but still bright as it had always been, and with some shame when he looked closer he realized that what he’d let himself doubt her into seeing as Force lightning was actually only more mundane electricity dancing in crackling streaks within a large glass bulb on a machine behind her. But his attention was soon captured by something even stranger.</p><p>“Whu…” he started, then had to work the word in his mouth turning it on his still-thick tongue before he finally managed to spit out “<i>What?</i>” as he stared at the thick black stitches that encircled his wrists, holding together deep gouges in his flesh. He didn’t know how he didn’t notice sooner, didn’t know how he could only be in minor amounts of pain when every bit of experience that he’d had with injuries told him that his forearms should be in agony to look like that.</p><p>Rey’s smile went a little stiff, like she was bracing herself for the chance that he wouldn’t be happy with what he heard. But what she said, ridiculously, was, “Did you know that Leia kept your baby teeth all this time?”</p><p>The name was still like a stab wound in his chest, a little duller after the time he’d been able to spend with her in the Force (if it had actually happened and not been a dream he was just waking from) but still jagged-edged. If he didn’t know better, that they’d moved beyond such tactics the moment he’d accepted himself as Ben Solo once more, he’d have thought Rey was bringing her up in a deliberate attempt to wound him. But he was sure that she wasn’t, so he just allowed her to feel the confusion in his mind rather than try wrestling with words once more.</p><p>“She came to me long enough to let know where to find them, and that was the key you see. Just what I needed when I already knew right where to find a cloning lab.” She gestured around them, at the dark planet of the Sith that no sane person, no <i>Jedi</i>, should ever want to return to for any reason if they were lucky enough to get away. “The only <i>small</i> problem was that I couldn’t work out how to form a complete body without defaulting to the instructions for Snokes it already had. Just, endless megalomaniacal psychopaths. Even without them having their minds in it was terrible.”</p><p>He pressed his confusion even more firmly to her mind, beginning to understand what she was suggesting but not <i>how</i> or <i>why</i>.</p><p>“I wasn’t about to let BB-8 plug himself into Sith computers to look for instructions, even though he tried to convince me to, so I had to figure out what I could on my own. And what I figured out was… parts.” She lightly caressed the stitching around his wrists, then pushed up one of the loose sleeves of the shirt she must have put him in to reveal another ring of them just below his shoulder. “It had no hardwired plans for if someone just lost an arm, or a leg, or… their entire corporeal form, I could get it to just go from the DNA I was able to feed in.” She gestured at the blood covering her with a wry smile and added, “Getting it all fitted together was the messy part.”</p><p>Her eyes met his, warm and open, and she lifted his hands once more to raise them to her lips and press a soft kiss to each circle of stitches. “Don’t you see, Ben? I’ve worked it out. Neither of us needs to be a sacrifice for the sake of the other. Now we can finally find out what it’s like to just <i>be</i>. As we are.”</p><p>And there was such a sweet certainty in her voice that everything would be well that he couldn’t even find it in himself to worry about ‘as he was’ apparently being a sewn together mess of scattered body parts.</p>
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